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Posts tagged as “Sailfish”

Microsoft Kidnaps Windows, Malware Everywhere & More…

FOSS Week in Review

The big Linux conference down in the land of Oz just completed and there are no really big shows on the agenda until Atlanta’s Great Wide Open opens its great doors wide in March. Everybody here in North Carolina, which I call home, is on the road, hanging out in Baghdad-by-the-Bay waiting to see how well the Panthers play in fog and trying to pretend to be old hats at having a pro home team worth the effort of a root or two.

You’d think it would be quiet around here, but it’s not. As always, it’s one thing after another, and as a coworker often often says, I’m getting too old for this. I could tell you stories, but I’m not. What I am going to tell you is the high points of this week in FOSS…

If you’re a Windows user, which most of you reading FOSS Force aren’t, then Microsoft wants to hijack your machine. It seems that the company that’s been spending millions — and has been buying into every free and open source conference it can find and a few it can’t — to get the word out that “Microsoft has changed,” hasn’t. If you happen to be unlucky enough to be using Windows 7, 8 or 8.1, you’re probably beginning to realize this right about now.

Windows users might be well advised to think about unplugging their computers from the Internet when they’re not around to keep an eye on things or they’re likely to wake-up in the morning, or return home from work, to find they’re running Windows 10 instead of whatever version they know and love.

Real Linux Coming to Tablets

Ever since I bought my roommate a second generation Nexus 7 tablet a few years back for Christmas, I’ve been intrigued by the possibilities the small form factor offers. The problem is that Android is geared almost solely to push e-commerce, and to that end wants to share information with practically everyone. Even worse, it’s not really free-as-in-freedom.

Jolla Tablet
The Jolla Tablet running Sailfish OS is now taking preorders in the U.S. and other countries.
That hasn’t kept roomie from loving hers, and spending hours with it daily. She’s even made herself something of an expert at using Android, which is amazing, given that she can’t use a Linux or Windows box for more than fifteen minutes without asking me how to do something or another.

Things are looking up for those of us who think we might like using a tablet if only we could find one with a real honest-to-goodness operating system like good ol’ GNU/Linux. There are a couple of Linux based tablets in the pipeline now — with one already taking preorders for a second-round limited production run and the other promising to take preorders any day now.

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux

Linus Torvalds Shoutback, ‘The H’ Closes & More…

FOSS Week in Review

Here we go with yet another “better late then never” edition of our Week in Review…

Jolla smartphones to utilize Wayland

You might remember Jolla, the Finnish company started by a group of laid-off Nokia employees. Back in May, we reported on their plans to release a new phone to be sold online that would run their own MeeGo fork called Sailfish OS.

Microsoft Snoops In Skype, Dissed By HP & More

Friday FOSS Week in Review

Where has Redmond’s moxy gone?

It wasn’t that many years ago that even a giant OEM like HP wouldn’t dare release a non-Windows product if the device type was Windows supported. If this were five years ago and the tablet boom was in full bloom as it is now and Windows was tablet ready, as it supposedly is now, the HP brass wouldn’t even entertain the thought of releasing a tablet running anything other than Redmond’s finest OS–apps available or no.

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